Poland sees itself as a possible next target of Russian aggression and is therefore fundamentally changing its relations with Russia.

The latest measure taken by Warsaw on Wednesday was the expulsion of a total of 45 Russian diplomats, their spouses and employees at their embassy.

They had operated "de facto intelligence work," said a spokesman for the agency;

Russia's secret services were "increasingly aggressive against Poland".

Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński wrote on Twitter: "We are consistently and resolutely dismantling the agent network of the Russian secret services in our country." At the same time it was announced that a Polish employee at the Warsaw registry office had already been arrested last week for spying for Russia.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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As if further evidence was needed that Moscow was looking at the eastern EU country with evil eyes, Dmitry Medvedev, the former President of Russia, published a long text entitled "About Poland" on the Telegram messenger service on Monday.

In it he covers the neighboring country, "our favorite European country", with irony, harsh criticism and reproaches.

He complains of alleged hatred of Russia and false views of history - in Poland today, the fascist occupation is "equated" with the Soviet occupation.

He also criticizes Warsaw's reactions to the Russian actions against Ukraine: an incompetent Polish elite now wants to break off economic relations with Russia.

However, he hopes that the country of Chopin and Copernicus will soon remember the importance of good relations with Russia and will no longer present itself as a vassal of America.

"Unusual Pamphlet"

Even if Medvedev is now only deputy head of the Russian Security Council, the text has caused a stir in Poland.

In many ways it is fatally reminiscent of President Vladimir Putin's historical essay on Russians and Ukrainians from July 2021, which appears to be the ideological basis for today's war of aggression.

The Warsaw Center for Eastern Studies also draws this comparison.

Medvedev's "unusual pamphlet" is apparently intended to stir up anti-Polish sentiments in Russia, to discredit Poland in the West as "russophobic" and in Poland itself to turn the "people" against the "elites", above all by referring to the costs of western Russia sanctions.

The editor-in-chief of the Warsaw newspaper "Rzeczpospolita", Bogusław Chrabota, responded to the "substitute president" Medvedev - who was president between two terms of Putin from 2008 to 2012 - immediately and in a similar tone.

He reminded the "bandits in the Kremlin" that, like the Moscow-backed communists of Poland, they would not rule forever.